Various types of heat exchangers or thermal energy transfer devices have been used in the past to provide heating or cooling air within rooms, in automotive vehicles and other applications.
One of the typical thermal energy transfer devices which have been used in a room heating convector apparatus includes, a pipe through with hot water flows, plural fins on the pipe, and a blower for blowing air across the pipe and fins so that the air is heated during such passage. Cooling fluid could also be circulated through the pipe in order to provide cooling to the room.
In such a device the fins are welded or otherwise secured to the outside surface of the pipe. The connections of the fins to the outside surfaces of the pipeline frequently impede the conduction of heat between the pipeline material and the major portion of the fin material. Additional disadvantages of the fin type heat exchanger are the cost of manufacture and the large size of the devices which make them impractical in applications where space is limited.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,369,835 (P. R. Goudy, Jr.) shows a fin arrangement combined with an internal mesh screen arrangement for increasing the conduction of thermal energy from water flowing through the screen.
The use of hollow tubular heat transfer coils sandwiched between layers of expanded metal foil screen is shown is U.S. Pat. No. 4,540,045 (V. D. Molitor). The screen provides heat transfer between water flowing through the heat transfer coils and a fluid such as air passed through the mesh screen.
Other examples of the use of mesh screen to aid heat transfer in a laminated panel are shown in U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,403,653 (Davidson) and 4,483,325 (Siemiller).
The prior art devices have bulky, complicated and expensive to produce.